Thinking About Childhood and Youth

Abstract

Childhood and youth are imagined in different ways. The chapters in this handbook make this their central focus, addressing the challenge of recognizing that the concepts we use make the objects of our research. They explore how conceptual frameworks constitute what we research. From a sociocultural perspective , childhood and youth (as well as adulthood) are fluid categories that are given definition and meaning by their social, cultural, political, institutional, locational, governmental, and economic contexts. As many of the chapters of this handbook illustrate, the experience of being a child or young person differs across time and place. From a developmental perspective , childhood and youth are distinctive phases of life that describe age-bounded developmental tasks. These approaches rest on different sets of assumptions, concepts, and frameworks about the nature, meaning, and experience of childhood and youth. Conceptual frameworks create truths and naturalize particular ways of thinking, and so create the discursive frameworks within which children and young people are understood, managed, and administered. With a focus on “thinking” about childhood and youth, the chapters in this handbook scrutinize theoretical orthodoxies and conceptual certainties. A focus on the tools we use to think about and define childhood and youth is essential because findings are never absolute and research is imperfect (and the order that institutional processes demand is elusive). This chapter explores key fault lines within the field that take up different positions in relation to the following questions: Is a “new” childhood and youth emerging and if so, does this require “new” concepts? Is the focus on problems and risks (new and old) and if so, what are they? Is the focus on childhood and youth on cultures, subjectivities, mobilities, hopes, and aspirations, and if so, what do these look like? Are childhood and youth a distinctive developmental phase of life? Are children and young people in an emergent state, incomplete and in deficit, until they make the transition into adulthood? Are the boundaries between the categories of childhood, youth, and adulthood blurring? This chapter addresses these key questions through an examination of theoretical orthodoxies and new developments. It takes a critical perspective on the dominant theoretical frameworks (and empirical studies) that have emerged from the global north, and, as in many of the chapters in this book, explores concepts and studies from the global south to account for current debates in this vibrant field.